BATON ROUGE — The Tigers were forced to overtime for the second straight game for the first time in over 20 years, but they came out on the winning side, defeating Arkansas, 66-63, Wednesday night at the Pete Maravich Center.
The Tigers and Razorbacks also went through a five-minute period of suspense as officials had to review the Cox Sports Television replay to determine whether Michael Jones’ top of the key jumper was a two to tie or three to win with 1.8 seconds to play.
One official signaled a two, another a three and Tack Minor missed a desperation half-court heave. The scoreboard, seeing the three-point signal, put 59-58 Arkansas on the board, but below the scoreboard, the officials were trying to get some order so that they could discuss the shot. The officials went to the replay monitor, looking at the replays from the tape-delayed television broadcast at the same time the LSU crowd and players from both teams were debating the replay being shown from a similar angle on the big scoreboard from the LSU production.
After several minutes, the officials ruled it a two and the game was tied at 58-58 going to overtime.
“When I made the call on the floor it was originally a two,” said Crew Chief Tom Eades of his call on the play. “We went to the replay to be sure. It was inconclusive and didn’t show us his foot was not on the line.”
Eades also said the officials reviewed the play seven or eight times.
The Tigers had taken a 58-56 lead on a length of the court run out by Antonio Hudson off a pass from Glen Davis with 10 seconds to play.
In the overtime period, Davis gave the Tigers the lead on two free throws, before Ronnie Brewer tied the game on two charity tosses of his own at the 3:14 mark and Brewer gave Arkansas a 61-60 lead with 2:07 to play in the session with another free throw.
The Tigers came down and after a missed jumper, Davis was fouled and made two free throws to give LSU the lead, 62-61, with 1:41 to play. Davis, after Arkansas missed two free throws, got a Tack Minor miss on the rebound and put the ball in to give LSU a 64-61 lead with 1:01 to play.
Eric Ferguson made two free throws to make it a one-point game with 30 seconds to play and after the Razorbacks fouled Minor, Minor missed the front end of a one-and one. Ferguson’s jumper with eight seconds left was blocked by Davis and Minor was fouled and made two free throws to give the Tigers a 66-63 lead with five seconds to play and that held up as Jones missed a three at the buzzer.
LSU made just 1-of-7 in the overtime, Arkansas 0-of-7, but LSU was 6-of-7 at the free throw line to Arkansas’s 5-of-9.
For the game, LSU shot just 36.7 percent (22-of-60), 25 percent from the arc (5-of-20), but again at the line the Tigers were good, making 17-of-20 for 85 percent. Arkansas shot 44 percent for the game (22-of-50), 8-of-17 from the arc and just 57.9 percent from the free throw line, 11-of-19. LSU out rebounded Arkansas 42-29 with 17 offensive boards.
LSU (9-5, 2-1) was led by Davis with 26 points and 18 rebounds, making 8-of-12 field goals and 10-of-11 free throws in 42 minutes, while Brandon Bass had 15 points. Brewer had 17 points to lead Arkansas, while Jones had 15 and Olu Famutimi 13. Arkansas falls to 13-5, 1-4 in the SEC.
“I’d like to compliment the Arkansas team and Stan (Heath) for how well I thought his team played because of what they came off at Mississippi State to come back into here. I’d like to compliment him on getting his team ready to play. But at the same time I want to compliment our team for not being as sharp as we’ve been … We couldn’t have won a game like this a month ago. It was good for our team to be able to win this game, however it happened, with (Darrel Mitchell, Antonio Hudson, Tack Minor) not having good night’s offensively. What happened is we defended when we needed to, we had enough stops and then we went back and rebounded the ball, particularly on the offensive end. We were able to do it tonight because we’ve gotten better defensively.”
This was the first time LSU has played in back-to-back overtime games since the 1983-84 season. The Tigers won both games in the Assembly Center, defeating Georgia on Feb. 4, 69-68, and Tennessee on Feb. 6, 61-59.